Sunday, October 14, 2012

Friday, August 10, 2012

You all know the story of donkey and dog and the washerman. When dog refuses to act on thief's arrival due to his own resentment towards management (read washerman), donkey assumes additional role and brays aloud disturbing management's slumber. Management was angry with donkey for transgressing the roles and broke its back. But the story was retold somewhere and managements in modern times rewards donkeys (no pun). That is, professionals can take roles of professionals of other disciplines and generalists can fill all the space usually specialists are expected to occupy. Anybody can do anything. Moreover, they dominate and out maneuver the left over professionals who still stick to their jobs!

Today morning I tweeted that

All organisations reflect the prevailing macro setting in the country. A pious organisation in a corrupt country? No way!!!

The crux of the article in author's own words: Indian discourse, whether in government or outside, is too dominated by generalists: people who can not only transgress their role, but who think they can take on any role.

Else where he writes:

A society not governed by a sense of professional identities will indeed resemble a group of headless chicken running in all directions. It will be a society where, in the guise of deference to eminence, genuine expertise will be devalued; it will be a society where the credibility of institutions will be subordinate to the authority of perceived virtue; it will be a society where people seek recognition not in their own jobs, but their ability to act as superior to other professions; it will be a society that is not mobilising the talents of its citizens to the fullest because it does not value their core competence.

....... It may turn out that social change may not require hoary calls for “total revolution”. It is better served by a rather less enchanted, more difficult, but more prosaic slogan. Simply put: Do your job.

You can easily identify ourselves and organisations we work with the phenomenon Mehta is describing. In fact, he was contextualising and giving perspective to Ram Devji's foray into politics.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Agriculture over next decade

Dr.K.J.S.Satyasai
Faculty member, BIRD, Lucknow

Have you wondered how
raising oil prices impact prospects of agriculture? The cost of cultivation is likely to increase
due to higher energy costs. Even if fuel prices are subsidized the pressures of
that subsidy would be mounting ultimately leading to pressures on agricultural
growth. On the other hand, growing oil prices would spur diversion of grains
for biofuel production building in pressures on the prices. Think of US diverting 40 per cent of its corn
production to ethanol production. The recently released OECD – FAO Agricultural
Outlook 2012-2021 projected that 6.3 billion gallons of ethanol would be traded
every year between US and Brazil, the two pre-eminent producers in the world by
2021. Biofuels are based mainly on agricultural
feedstocks and are expected to consume a growing share of the global production
of sugarcane (34%), vegetable oil (16%), and coarse grains (14%) by 2021.

U.S. ethanol
expansion has raised corn prices as per one estimate prices would have been 21% lower in 2010 without the rising demand
from U.S. ethanol. This has increased
costs of imports for Mexico that imports one-third of its corn between $1.5
and $3.2 billion from 2006-11. This cost is ten-to-twenty times the
amount the Mexico spends on its productivity program (MasAgro) for small-scale
corn farmers. Imagine the plight of
Mexicans whose staple diet is corn tortillas accounting for 40% of calories
consumed in the country. The impact
naturally spreads to meat and dairy prices too due to high feed costs. This is only an example. Other countries,
especially those dependent on food-imports, also will be equally affected. The growing biofuel economy would increase the
prices of sugar across the globe and absorb larger share of crop production.

Already, the world is under the surge
of growing prices from which there does not seem to be any respite in near future,
when the report points out that ‘prices have come off recent peaks, but food price inflation remains a
concern in developing countries.’ Agricultural prices are likely to remain
on a higher plateau. Despite the upward
trending prices, resource constraints and high costs would limit production
growth. Global agricultural output growth
slowed down over time and is likely to decline from 2.0 per cent over several
decades to 1.7 per cent during next decade. Average growth during past decade and the next
one is given in Figure 1.

Developing countries continue to
dominate market developments and emerging economies would play a larger role in
expanding world trade in agriculture. Processed
foods, proteins and fats show higher growth rates in consumption because of changing
diets. Fisheries sector is likely to would grow at 15 per cent per annum and aquaculture
would surpass capture fisheries as a primary
source of fish consumption. Meat consumption expands in developing countries
due to income effect. Poultry meat will lead this anticipated growth as the
cheapest and most accessible source of meat protein, overtaking pigmeat as the
largest meat sector by the end of the outlook period. Developing countries would
become most important milk producers.
Projected growth of various commodities is given in Figure 2.

Given the Outlook, the role of governments becomes critical both in
framing domestic policies as well negotiating in international fora. It also should help the stakeholders in
agriculture and rural development to realign strategies and strengthen value
chains that can help tap the emerging potential, while insuring against adverse trends.

[The write up is based on the OECD/Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations (2012), OECD-FAO
Agricultural Outlook 2012, OECD Publishing. doi:10.1787/agr_outlook-2012-en.]